Let's just call them the "Deadbeat Party"

By Gene Lyons
Salon.com

As I write, it's impossible to guess how the latest made-for-TV partisan crisis in Washington will end. We've reached the point where the president of the United States felt he needed to deliver a prime-time speech essentially defending the post-Enlightenment values of reason, evidence and compromise against an obscurantist movement more like a religious cult than a political party.

But has President Obama got the guts to deal with the reality facing him? Signs are not encouraging. The standoff has two major components: the adolescent nihilism of the Republican right, and the intellectual sloth of the American people. It's unclear that Obama has the political courage to confront the first, while the White House has scarcely made a serious effort to inform the public what's at stake, and why.

Hence the pleading tone of Monday's speech, which makes sense only if Obama's ultimately willing to use the extraordinary powers of the presidency to end this Tea Party hostage drama on his terms.

Playing chicken with budget default, the president argued,

"is no way to run the greatest country on Earth. It is a dangerous game we've never played before, and we can't afford to play it now. Not when the jobs and livelihoods of so many families are at stake. We can't allow the American people to become collateral damage to Washington's political warfare."

(More here.)